Patricia Stephens Due fought for justice during the height of the Civil
Rights era, surrendering her very freedom to ensure that the rights of
others might someday be protected. Her daughter, Tananarive, grew up deeply
enmeshed in the values of a family committed to making right whatever they
saw as wrong. Together, they have written a paean to the movement�its
struggles, its nameless foot-soldiers, and its achievements�and an incisive
examination of the future of justice in this country. Their mother-daughter
journey spanning the struggles of two generations is an unforgettable story.

In 1960, when she was a student at Florida A&M University, Patricia and
her sister Priscilla were part of the movement’s landmark �jail-in,� the
first time during the student sit-in movement when protestors served their
time rather than paying a fine. She and her sister, and three FAMU students,
spent forty-nine days behind bars rather than pay for the �crime� of sitting
at a Woolworth lunch counter. Thus began a lifelong commitment to human
rights. Patricia and her husband, civil rights lawyer John Due, worked
tirelessly with many of the movement’s greatest figures throughout the
sixties to bring about change, particularly in the Deep Southern state of
Florida.

Freedom in the Family chronicles these years with fascinating, raw
power. Featuring interviews with civil rights leaders like Black Panther
Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and ordinary citizens whose
heroism has been largely unknown, this is a sweeping, multivoicedaccount of
the battle for civil rights in America. It also reveals those leaders�
potentially controversial feelings about the current state of our nation, a
country where police brutality and crippling disparities for blacks and
whites in health care, education, employment, and criminal justice still
exist today.

The daughter of slaves, Madam C. J. Walker was orphaned at seven, married
at fourteen and widowed at twenty. She spent the better part of the next two
decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then � with the
discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for black women � everything
changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds:
building a storied beauty empire from the ground up, amassing wealth
unprecedented among black women and devoting her life to philanthropy and
social activism. Along the way, she formed friendships with great
early-twentieth-century politi-cal figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker
T. Washington.

On Her Own Ground is not only the first comprehensive biography of
one of recent history's most amazing entrepreneurs and philanthropists, it
is about a woman who is truly an African American icon. Drawn from more than
two decades of exhaustive research, the book is enriched by the author's
exclusive access to personal letters, records and never-before-seen
photographs from the family collection. Bundles also showcases Walker's
complex relationship with her daughter, A'Lelia Walker, a celebrated hostess
of the Harlem Renaissance and renowned friend to both Langston Hughes and
Zora Neale Hurston. In chapters such as "Freedom Baby," "Motherless Child,"
"Bold Moves" and "Black Metropolis," Bundles traces her ancestor's
improbable rise to the top of an international hair care empire that would
be run by four generations of Walker women until its sale in 1985. Along the
way, On Her Own Ground reveals surprising insights, tells fascinating
stories and dispels many misconceptions.